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To hear President Vladimir V. Putin tell it, Russia’s economy has thrived despite Western sanctions, becoming more self-sufficient and reorienting toward new markets. But there is one company that Russian officials make no secret about missing: Boeing.
The aviation giant’s planes play a critical role in Russia’s economy, connecting its far-flung cities. Until the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Boeing sold and maintained planes in Russia and operated a major design center there. It also bought much of its titanium, a key material for modern jets, from Russia.
As President Trump pursues a striking rapprochement with Moscow, the company has emerged as an early test of whether American businesses that fled Russia early in the war will return.
Boeing has said nothing in public about whether it is considering going back, and it declined to comment for this article. But the obstacles are considerable.
Mr. Trump has so far kept in place American sanctions on Russian aviation, which give him leverage with Mr. Putin as he pursues negotiations to end the war. And there is widespread skepticism in U.S. aviation circles about the business sense of Boeing returning to Russia, a reflection of the enormous damage that three years of war have done to the country’s standing in the American corporate world.
For the most part, Russia’s economy has surprised outside observers with its ability to withstand sanctions and pivot away from the West. Chinese cars have replaced Western ones. Russian train factories that worked with the German company Siemens continued production on their own. A Russian payment system filled the gap left by Visa and Mastercard.
And Mr. Putin has sought a similar turnaround in aviation: The country’s own civilian aircraft, he said in 2023, needed to fill the gap left by Western plane makers that pulled out of Russia. Russia has poured billions into revamping its Soviet-era aviation industry, but experts do not expect mass production of fully Russian-made airliners to begin before 2030.
Russia’s commercial airline fleet still relies on more than 450 planes made by Boeing and its European rival, Airbus. Those jets — a lifeline for a nation spanning 11 time zones — account for more than half of the passenger planes in use in Russia today, according to Cirium, an aviation data firm.
The European Union, where Airbus is based, remains staunchly opposed to any rapprochement with Russia. Airbus also suspended its operations in Russia in 2022, although it does still buy some of its titanium there.
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